Oddities
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: In 1944, the Cobra unit had hastened the end of the most devastating war in human history. In 2005, FOXHOUND had brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Now, in four decades later, as humanity faced extinction at the hands of the omnics, the question remained as to which legacy would be followed.


**Oddities**

Within her office in the United Nations building, Gabrielle Adawe watched Detroit burn.

Actually, "burn" was a bit too melodramatic, she figured. "Smoulder." That was it. In the holographic image displayed before her, it was fair to say that the motor city was smouldering. Its buildings were smouldering. Omnic bodies were smouldering (or sparking). Human bodies were smouldering…well they were, if one factored in the summer heat. Point was, Detroit had seen better days. The only building left intact was its omnium, towering over the cityscape like a pyramid. A place where the gods dispensed judgement over lesser mortals, sending out endless legions to deal death. Waving her hand, she shifted the image from the drone feed to a topographic map of the city. The red was pressing outward, and the blue, while still encircling the city, was being pushed ever further back to the perimeter. The only signs of white were on tattered flags draped over tattered bodies, either flown out from the siege lines to greener pastures, or left where they were in the hope of future burial.

Detroit was a disaster, Gabrielle reflected. This entire war was a disaster. Right now, she was most concerned about Detroit, because it was the closest omnium site to New York, but as she shifted the image again, she was reminded just how disastrous the so-called Omnic Crisis was turning out to be. On the holographic map of the world was a representation of every omnium site, from Detroit to San Paulo, from central Australia, to Siberia, to Hong Kong, to even the bottom of the South China Sea. Why the Omnica Corporation had built an omnium there, Gabrielle didn't know, but whatever, they had, and the omniums were spawning out legions of killing machines that no government in the world had been able to stop. As the image changed from omnic sites to territory, Gabrielle was again reminded of how much red there was in the world than there'd been only a year ago.

She scrolled the image again, taking a glance at casualty lists before sighing. The United Nations had evolved from the League of Nations in the aftermath of the bloodiest war in human history. Now, not only had the Omnic Crisis eclipsed that war's casualty rate, but it might well turn out to be the last war in human history. After the madness of the 2010s, Gabrielle had hoped that war might become a relic of the past, as battles were fought with words rather than bullets, but alas, hope was for people who didn't serve as the UN under-secretary general. Because…She frowned, as she slid the hologram to the last set of images. People with hope had to hope better than she did, because the proposal she was working on wasn't so much based on hope, but rather desperation.

"Miss Adawe?"

She deactivated the hologram and activated her office's intercom. "Yes?"

"George Ryan is here to see you."

"Good. Send him in Della."

"Yes ma'am."

She was handling it well, Gabrielle reflected. People like Mister Ryan tended to turn a few heads. If Della had known that Mister Ryan had spent a great deal of time removing them, then chances were her level of cool would be a bit further south.

The doors to her office opened and Mister Ryan walked in. Even clad in a formal business suit, Gabrielle wasn't fooled. His left eye was a cybernetic, his blood was artificial, and she knew that if the suit was removed, she'd find more steel than flesh. Mister Ryan might be in his sixties (around her own age), but thanks to the augments, he looked no older than someone in his mid-thirties.

"Miss Adawe?"

She extended a hand. "Mister Ryan," she said, before shaking it. "So glad you could come." She walked over to the drinks cabinet. "Can I get you anything?"

"Just water, thank you."

"Water? Well, suit yourself." Gabrielle pulled out a bottle of chilled water, along with a bottle of bourbon. "I know you're thinking about me drinking on the job, but when I live in a world where every day could be my last, well…" She began pouring the water. "I'm sure you can sympathize."

She handed the water to him, but his back was to her. He was instead looking out the window.

"Mister Ryan?"

"Last day," he murmured. He turned back to her and took the water. "Took me an hour to get into this place, and that's not including all the tanks and soldiers outside the complex."

"Your point?"

"That compared to the rest of the world, you're in the safest place there is."

"I suppose so," Gabrielle said. She began pouring the bourbon. "Still, the omnics know that the UN is as close to a world government as currently exists, so that does make us the number one target." She put the bottles back, returned to her desk, and took a sip. Mister Ryan did likewise.

"So," Gabrielle said. "Before we begin, I'll say that I most appreciate you coming here from Turkey. I understand that the fighting's been particularly brutal there."

Mister Ryan shrugged. "No more than anywhere else."

"Are you still with the PMCs? Or more a lone wolf?" Gabrielle asked.

Mister Ryan shrugged.

"Maverick let you go?"

"Long story," he murmured.

The under-secretary general sighed. "Can we dispense with the part where I feign ignorance?"

His organic eye blinked. "Excuse me?"

Gabrielle sighed again. "Your first name isn't George, and your last name isn't Ryan. Your first name is Jack, and your last name is whatever suits you best."

"Ma'am?"

"You're a cyborg ninja, who's gone by codenames ranging from White Devil, to Raiden, to Mister Reaper. You were at the Big Shell in 2009, helped put down the Outer Heaven revolt in 2018, and were responsible for the death of Senator Armstrong in 2018. You call yourself George in what I'm guessing is a tribute or piece of mockery to George Sears, former president of the United States, whose true name, such as it was, was Solidus Snake. You were likewise the friend slash ally of Solid Snake, who was born out of the same project. You have a wife and child hiding somewhere, and they're pretty good at hiding, because up until 2014, the country outside this building was in the control of a group of rogue AIs. And now, after fighting against them, you fight against robots." She took another sip. "Of course, with all the Metal Gears that have existed over the years, from REX, to RAY, to GEKKO, I'd say you're pretty used to that."

Jack didn't say anything. He just sat there, frowning. Gabrielle smirked and took another sip.

"How did you-"

"I'm arguably the most powerful woman on this planet dear boy, and I didn't get there without learning the world's dirty secrets," she said. She leant back in her chair and smiled. "I'm impressed."

"Excuse me?"

"That you didn't deny it. I'd have expected you to disavow anything I just said in some bid to further distance yourself from your sordid past, but hey, after climbing through the bullshit in this place for over two decades, I suppose I had to come across a clean pipe eventually."

Jack smiled faintly. "Still the same wit I see."

"Excuse me?"

"Back in the 2010s. You were Nigeria's representative, and one of the most vocal critics of the war economy."

Gabrielle remained silent.

The UN had been founded after World War II, as a means of reducing the risk of armed conflict. Up until 2010, it had arguably done its job, at least in as much that it had prevented a third world war. But things had changed that year. The world had changed. War had become a business. The economy had shifted to accommodate that. Proxy conflicts had raged across the world for no reason other than to keep the gears of development going. It had ended, finally, but history wouldn't look kindly on the 2010s – four years of war, and six years of PMCs lamenting the end of the wars that had lined their pockets. As bad as the Omnic Crisis was, no-one had intended for this to happen. But thanks to the Patriots, a world had been created exactly as they had desired, even if their creator hadn't.

She knew the man in front of her had had some role to play in all that. On a normal day, she'd have asked him how, and not for the kind of leverage she'd flexed to get to this position. But it wasn't a normal day. There hadn't been any "normal days" for years.

"Alright," Jack said. "You brought me here. I came. You know more about me and the Patriots than probably any other person on this planet, but…that's not it, is it?" he asked. "The Patriots are gone. The Philosophers are gone. They didn't get the world they wanted, and Big Boss didn't get the world he wanted. So…why am I here?"

"You're here," Gabrielle said, "because among other things, you're the last survivor of a world order that no longer exists." She reactivated the hologram. "Here. Take a look at this, and tell me if you recognise them."

Jack spun round in his chair and looked at the hologram – lines of men and women arranged by affiliation. None of them were marked, but he read them out, as his eyes shifted from line to line. "Cobra," he began. "FOXHOUND. Beauty and the Beast." He paused, before whispering, "Dead Cell." He got to his feet and walked up to the hologram, his eyes lingering from one of them in FOXHOUND. "Heroes," he murmured, before his gaze shifted to one of the Dead Cell personnel. "Or psychopaths, I suppose."

"Can't you be both?" Gabrielle asked.

"No."

"No?"

"No." Jack looked back at Gabrielle. "Don't know if you've noticed ma'am, but I'm a psychopath. Don't like it, but I am. And I'm not a hero. I've only known a few heroes in my life, and they're all dead."

"Hmm." Gabrielle leant back in her chair. "Is it fair to say that there's more psychopaths or heroes in war?"

"Way I see it, one leads to another."

"And you? Did you start out as a hero?"

"No," Jack said. "I never was."

"Hmm. And if I told you that you could be a hero now, how would you respond?"

Jack just stood there in silence. There was no motion on his face, no hint in his eyes as to what he was thinking. What he was feeling. Taking the plunge, Gabrielle began to speak again.

"Special forces," she said. "They're not new. Practically every country in the world has its own form of special forces, and they've proven just as useless in taking out the omnics as everyone else. But these people…" She gestured back to the hologram. "These heroes, these psychopaths, these freaks of nature…they're something else, aren't they?" She began gesturing to them. "Men who speak to the dead. Psychics and shamans. Cyborgs. Near-vampires." She looked at Jack. "Think there were a few ninjas like you along the way as well."

"You looking for more?"

"Ninjas? Maybe. But freaks like these? These…oddities?" She smirked. "Why yes I am, Mister Ryan, thanks for asking."

"I didn't ask."

Gabrielle smirked. "Jack Ryan. Do you know that in a series of books he became president of the country outside this building?"

"Don't do much reading ma'am."

"Really? Well, it doesn't matter." She leant forward. "I'm going to be perfectly frank, Jack. We've got two years, maybe three, before the human race is completely and utterly screwed."

He took a seat, and behind his eyes, Gabrielle could see the gears turning. "That's your assessment?"

"That's my assessment, after reading assessments from commanders in over a hundred countries, and believe it or not, their assessments are even more dire than I am." She shifted the hologram back to the territory map. "The omnics are winning – not because they're fighting smarter, but because they can replace their losses like insects. We haven't taken out a single omnium, and taking them out is the only way we win this war." She sighed. "You know, I can't help but wonder if one of those heroes you recall would have done a sneaking mission for me."

"Hero?" Jack murmured.

"Would you prefer I call Solid Snake a friend? The greatest soldier in world city by how you regarded him?"

"Some might give that title to Big Boss."

"Some," Gabrielle said. "But not me."

The look on Jack's face told her all she needed to know about his tacit agreement with the sentiment. Nevertheless, she continued to speak. "I need people like you, Jack. Oddities. Outcasts. Freaks. I want a team, and I want it now, because the only success we've had against the omnics is when we've fought them asymmetrically. We get a team, we get them inside the omniums, and the human race gets to live long enough to marvel how we ever let this happen."

"And you want me to do that," Jack said.

"Are you surprised?" Gabrielle asked. She leant back in her chair. "I know you're as good as slicing through omnics as you are people, but I need you to help me identify the people like you. The people who I can make a team to rival even FOXHOUND itself."

"FOXHOUND nearly destroyed the world," Jack murmured.

"And before Shadow Moses, one of their number saved it," Gabrielle said. "I'm willing to take the risk. Question is…are you?" She extended a hand to the mercenary before her.

After a moment, he shook it.


End file.
